App Review: 3D Bookshelf by Ideal Binary

While we don’t review a lot of ebook apps around here (mostly games and utilities) we did have a change to examine and test drive 3D bookshelf by Ideal Binary. 3D Bookshelf is, like every other classical ebook reader, just that - an ebook reader for the common classic books like A Christmas Carol, Sheflock Holmes, Frankenstein and many others. However, 3D Bookshelf has taken the iPhone-ebook reader a step beyond many of the other classic book reader clones by adding a cool 3D interface.

As mentioned, the developers for 3D Bookshelf have built in several 3D animations. These cool animations include page turns and zooming in and out of the book and pages. 3D Bookshelf also has book scrolling just like that of cover flow in the iPod, allowing you to browse the many classic books that it has. Included with the animations are appropriate sounds (page turning) to add to the realistic experience.

While within a book you can add any number of bookmarks, a necessary function of any ebook reader app. Also, while reading, you have immediate access to the book’s table of contents to easily jump around from chapter to chapter. The app however, lacks font resizing and landscape reading for those that don’t like to read in portrait mode or who would like a smaller (or bigger) font.

3D Bookshelf is a decent and fun classic ebook reader for the iPhone. The interface is excellent and the app offers a great, wide selection of classic books that are right at your fingertips. We can easily recommend 3D Bookshelf for the classic book lovers out there that will appreciate the small animations added to enhance the reading experience.

What we liked: Cool 3D interface, decent classic book selection.
What we didn’t like: Needs more books?

[itunes-link]

App Review: Metal Gear Solid Touch by Konami Digital Entertainment

Metal Gear Solid Touch is the iPhone version of the PlayStation game Metal Gear Solid by Konami. Since I’ve never played MGS for anything other than the iPhone, I’ll be focusing on that version in this review.

I’ve spent some good time playing this game however, unfortunately, my iPhone’s battery started to die and I took it to Apple on Friday and they restored the firmware and erased all of my screen shots. So, since they want me to use the phone without restoring my backup (they think the firmware is corrupt which is causing poor battery) I’m having to start fresh and have lost all of my app data. I’m OK with firmware restores but I really do wish that there was a better way to get app data synced back to my phone somehow. Loosing app data for several apps and games that I’m in the middle of testing for review is a real pain. Oh, and so far, the battery isn’t any better…

Metal Gear Solid Touch is a first person shooter game based on the console game. When you first launch the app you are given the story (you play in story mode) and you are given your first orders. Since you are a soldier, your missions are typically to take out the enemy. To play, you sit behind a bunker and when the enemy is visible you jump out and shoot them. The first few levels are pretty straight forward, shooting various other soldiers, then the enemy gets more advanced and levels get harder as distant snipers, helicopters and other artillery are brought out to be used against you.

When an enemy soldier appears they have a “timer” that counts down until they shoot at you. If you don’t hit them before they fire, and you’re not behind the bunker, then they will shoot you. You can sustain about 10 hits before you’re dead so be careful. Once the enemies “timer” runs out then usual disappear, only to return a shot while later to take another shot. Distant enemies are harder to hit, and you must use a sniper rifle to get them.

One thing about MGST that you will notice is the simplicity in the controls. To aim, you simply touch anywhere on the screen and drag your finger. Once you’ve got an enemy in your crosshairs you simply tap the screen to fire. If you are not touching the screen in any way then your soldier automatically ducks behind the bunker. So, siting tight to dodge some incoming is as easy as simply not touching anything.

There is no walking around in MGST. In fact, the screen is pretty much static with the exception of the movement of your soldier as he jumps up to aim or fire and the appearance of the enemy in the battlefield in front of you. Once you’ve met the mission requirements, like killing 18 enemy soldiers, then you return to the story and progress to the next level. During the story mode there are some pretty cool images to help with the story.

In all I have been pretty pleased with this game. I’m a big fan of FPS style games and so this one does fit well into that genre. I worry a bit that many will find that the game has limited replay appeal, however if you are a fan of FPS games then you should enjoy this one. Recommended for shooter die-hards for sure. Current pricing on this game makes it difficult to recommend to everyone.

What we liked: Simple controls, good FPS game similar to Shooter.
What we didn’t like: Price, limited replayability.

App Review: Voices by Tap Tap Tap

If you’re looking for an app to show off your fancy new iPhone to your friends then add Voices by TapTapTap to your lineup.  While not overly exciting, Voices is definitely entertaining and is a lot more fun when there’s more than one person around.

If you haven’t guessed yet, Voices takes your voice and alteres it into one of 17 different sounding voices. So, now’s your chance to be Darth Vader (”dark side” voice) and say those famous words: “Luke, I am your father!” Or if you grew up listenning to the Chipmunks then now you can be just like them too. There’s also a fan alteration (who hasn’t spoke into a fan?), canyon (gives you an echo) and even reverse.

The app is extremely well polished. The interface is beautiful and when you go to record your voice for transformation there’s even the sound of a throat clearing before you speak.  Your recordings are saved, if you choose to keep them, for later playback.

Truth be told there’s really not much more to say about this app.  Transformations worked well, although some of them could be a little better done.  One complaint is that it doesn’t have a lot of replay appeal.  Once we messed with it for a bit trying all the transformations then what more is there to do?  I will say, however, that my 5 year old thinks its great - so this may be a better target audience then you and your buddies. Another complaint I have with Voices is that you can’t record your voice, then hear or try the same recording on all of the transformations.  In other words, you record once and it’s good only for the transformation that you recorded it under.  (To clarify, if you select Cyborg, then it comes up with the mic, you then speak into the device and touch the stop button when done.  The app then transforms it into the cyborg sound and you can choose to save it then).

Don’t get your hopes up too high and Voices will not let you down.  I was slightly disappointed in the quality of the transformations however, if you can get past this and see it for what it is (entertaining) then I can recommend it.

What we liked: The idea is great, interface is awesome.
What we didn’t like: Some transformations need help, limited replay appeal, inability to record your voice once and transform it into any of the different styles.

App Review: Jet Car Stunts by True Axis

Alright, all you car lovin’, stunt crazed, speed fanatics take note and listen up: Jet Car Stunts is awesome! Seriously though, I can’t put this game down! I’m finding myself reaching for my iPhone more often just to get a few minutes of stunt action in. It’s crazy! This game is not only one of the funnest car games I’ve played lately, it’s highly addictive and leaves you wanting more and coming back to get it. Now, for the actual review portion of this post:

Jet Car Stunts has two different game modes: time trials and platforming. The two objectives are quite different and each offers it’s own set of challenges. If you choose platforming, the objective of the game is to jump from platform to platform, doing various (car) tricks as you go all while keeping your retry count and time down. Your main object here is just simply to stay alive (ie: don’t fall off the track) and complete the course. The courses for platforming are quite a bit more difficult than the tracks for time trials. If you choose time trials, the whole objective is to do five laps of the track as fast as possible and to beat the clock.

Jet Car Stunts is Open Feint enabled so your high scores (or low) are automatically posted for all to see (can be disabled). Taking a quick glance at the timings posted on the leaderboards tells you that you’ll need to practice a lot in order to really compete at a global scale. However, this isn’t really a huge interest for me. Simply playing the game in either mode provides a lot of entertainment value and playability in and of itself.

Jet Car Stunts has multiple levels in each mode. Each level is unlocked by completed all of the courses in the previous level. So, to move on to intermediate in the time trials, you must score at least a bronze in three of the four various courses in the easy set. Same goes for platforming, in order to move on you must complete four out of five courses for that level. Be warned though, tracks get tough quickly. Just moving into the intermediate group and you quickly realize that you need to be an expert stunt car driver to complete them.

Controling the Jet Car is done via virtual buttons (jet, forward, reverse, brakes) and tilting the device (accelerometer) left or right to steer. If you happen to be flying through the air (quite common in this game) and you see you’re about to overshoot your track or landing spot, touching the brake will bring out the flaps (air brakes!) to help slow you down. Touching the jet button will ignite the jet engine and propel you faster and faster. Be careful though, as you’re accelerating using the jet engine you are quickly burning through jet fuel. Once the jet fuel is gone you have to wait until you pass through a checkpoint before getting more.

In all, we’ve been having a lot of fun with this game and so with that, it’s an easy recommendation. If you like car games of any kind then check out Jet Car Stunts, it’s pure iPhone game fun!

App Review: Balloons! by Shiny Development

We first covered Balloons! by Shiny Development a few months ago when it was in beta testing. It’s been a while but the developer finally finished up the app and got it into the App Store just recently. Since we had the opportunity to be a beta tester we were also given a copy of the full version for review.

For those of you familiar with Distant Shores then you’ll understand the idea behind Balloons! very quickly, since they are quite similar.  For those unfamiliar, the entire premise is to share your thoughts and musings with some random, unkown person that could be anywhere in the world.  However, unlike Distant Shores, Balloons! allows you to attach a photo to your musings prior to sending them.  Also, where Distant Shores is rather relaxing (as you stroll along the beach you find bottles with messages), Balloons! I didn’t find to be that way.  In fact, all of the graphics and imagery of Balloons! is meant to give it a fun and exciting feel, after all it is fun and exciting to get messages from around the world!

Balloons! wants to use your Location Services so that it can pinpoint your location.  However, this is (to our understanding) really only used to let others know where the message came from.

When you launch Balloons! you are given the option to Launch your own balloon or to catch one.  If you want to launch your own balloon then you would enter who the message is from, add a photo (or take another) and then add a message.  You then select the balloon you want to use from an array of balloon colors and shapes (this is rather pointless, really).  Now you’re ready to launch!

Selecting Catch a balloon allows your to catch one of the many balloons with messages that are already floating around in the system.  We couldn’t catch a balloon with a more recent message than “about a day ago” which meant the real time back and forth that Distant Shores offers is a no go.  However, you could catch a balloon that had been caught and re-released by someone else.  In fact, this is one of the major points to Balloons! is to keep adding messages to the same balloon.  So, when you get one of these balloons with multiple messages you can read through them all and add your own message and relaunch.

The app worked just fine but I have to be honest in that I’m not sure there is a lot of appeal with this one.  The lack of real time interactivity is a major downer and I completely lost interest in the app after only a few minutes (pssst… please allow for real time interaction!). When I checked on the two balloons I had launch they had still not been caught after a full day in the system. Hmmm… where’s the fun in that?

The app does show tremendous promise though.  If the developer makes the app more interactive then there’s no reason that Balloons! wouldn’t see some great success.  We loved the great interface and reading some of the musings was fun.  Let’s just tweak it a bit and we should have a winner.  However, if you really liked Distant Shores and found yourself addicted to that app, then Balloons! is still worth a try as you may just find that it works great for you.

What we liked: Idea is great, graphics are great, app is well implemented.
What we didn’t like: no real time interactive communication, balloons are launched and not caught for a day or longer, balloons that you catch are also old,

App Review: JellyCar 2 by Disney Interactive

When the first Jellycar hit the app store some time ago it was easily a very popular app.  The first version enjoyed much success and a huge fan following for a long time (well, it still does today since - even I’ve never uninstalled the first version).  Just a few days ago Disney Interactive released the sequel to this very popular jelly world: JellyCar 2. Read more

App Review: Tap Tap Revenge 3 by Tapulous

Tap Tap Revenge 3 was by far the most anticipated game on the app store this month. And to me, it was worth the wait. After introducing push notifications in the last “version” (TTR 2.6), there was a lot of negative feedback. Tapulous say they have looked at the problem, and push works in Tap Tap 3.

What I really love about this game is the layout. At the title menu, you scroll along the “wheel” to select your gameplay. Career, the new quick play function, online, or two player. Tapulous have (and I think this is great) included avatars in this version. As well as the track store option, you can choose to buy avatar items such as guitars, backgrounds and clothes. At first, I thought you had to buy in-game currency with real life cash, but my heart quickly started beating again when I found out that you earn coins by completing songs in a reasonable position. Another new feature is levels. Now, Tapulous kind of introduced this feature in Tap Tap 2.x, but said it was experimental. In online play, you earn exp, and like most games, level up. At higher levels, you can enter better rooms with people more your caliber. What I also like is at the end of an online session, the winner is displayed at the top. It also says how many coins/exp he/she earned. If you tap the chat tab at the top of the online menu, you can chat with other players currently in your session. This is a feature that everyone wanted in Tap Tap 2.x.

Moving on to the actual gameplay, each song has it’s own unique, original theme. Tapulous have completely re-designed the structure of it. Special tappers, normal tappers, shakers, everything has a new image. Also in online gameplay, you can see the current players avatars at the top rightof the screen. Every now and then one might move up or down. This is good, because instead of it just saying what place you are out of x amount of people, you can actually see that person you wanted to beat, or that noob that everybody thrashes.

In every aspect of the game, tapulous have completely changed everything. Some may say it’s bad, but the majority of people I asked thought the changes were for the better. In conclusion, Tap Tap Revenge 3 has original, well thought out gameplay, but lacks the loading speeds that you may find in other apps. This is mainly because the online section is hosted on the web, not downloaded into the app itself. That means, every time you switch pages, you are downloading a different page. This could be improved by building in the online section, so we can move between sessions quicker! But most importantly, the price. Tap Tap Revenge 3 is in the $0.99 category, so be sure to snap it up before the price is raised! Thanks, Tapulous, for an excellent game!

App Review: Animation Creator by Red Software LLC

Animation Creator by Red Software LLC is a nifty app that allows you to draw and create your own animations - frame by frame. I first downloaded Animation Creator a couple of days ago and started into my first animation, these are my findings while using this app.

So, like everyone else, I too am intrigued by creating my own animations. There’s a lot of programs out there, for either your desktop or even your iPhone, to help in fulfilling this desire. However, Animation Creator caught our attention.

Animation Creator has a pretty large swath of tools that you can use to create your own animation. However, the application is not without its issues and gripes: for starters, the app does not include any template animations. Once you launch the app there is nothing to help get you started, you must start fresh with no frames. For an animation app this was a little annoying, I would have expected there be several pre-existing animations that we could tinker with before starting our own. The other gripe I had is that pulling up the tools menu is too difficult: you must first tap the screen with three (3) fingers, then touch the tools button. Since tools are one of the things you pull up the most it is a bit cumbersome. Finally, by no fault of the app, I found it often too difficult to paint on the screen with my fingers. I don’t have large fingers at all, but being even remotely precise is simply not possible.

As I mentioned, the app has a lot of tools for creating your own animations. Using these tools you can create some fun animations, just don’t expect anything that is TV worthy. For the price of 99 cents, you can’t go wrong in trying, especially if you at all like animations or creating your own. However, be warned though, that animations take significant time to create - especially one frame at a time. Animation Creator has a good start so hopefully we’ll keep seeing the improvements and enhancements come (templates, please!).

What we liked: Large selection of tools, intuitive animation creation.
What we didn’t like: No templates to get you started, too many actions to get to the tools, time consuming to get even a basic animation.

Here’s it’s list of features (from their app listing):

• A beautiful, easy to use interface
• Full screen editing, no annoying tools in the way
• Paint brush
• Eraser
• Frame positioning
• Frame rotation
• Line
• Rectangle
• Line width selection
• Circle
• Color selection palettes
• Color selection sliders, including transparencies
• Shadowing, your creations pop off the screen
• Shake to undo
• Zooming and panning
• Background from photo library
• Background from camera
• Add, delete and copy frames, easily
• Quick menu system, touch and hold one finger
• On the fly frame rate adjustment
• ‘Onion Skinning’, see an overlay of previous frame
• Up to 24fps on iPhone 3GS and new iPod Touch, up to 12fps on iPhone 2G/3G.
• Rotate frame with Positioner tool
• Improved Move tool performance
• Renamed ‘Move’ tool to ‘Positioner’ tool
• Save brush size on exit
• Increased zoom level
• Double tap with two fingers to quick zoom
• More frames per second with new iPod Touch

App Review: Backbreaker Football by NaturalMotion Games ltd

I’m a fan of Madden just as much as the next guy. However, one thing I’ve always thought was missing from the game was the ability to be the guy with the ball, running and dodging your opponent and having an up-close view of that play, as it happens. Well, that’s where Backbreaker Football [Tackle Alley] by NaturalMotion Games comes in. Backbreaker Football puts the ball in your hands, and has you run it down the field for the TD. That’s it, there’s nothing more to do than to run the ball in, but for this game, it’s enough! Read more

App Review: BioSub by Origin8

I have long been a fan of the Sentinel games by Origin8.  These tower defense games are some of my favorites.  In creating BioSub, Origin8 explores a very different type of game.  BioSub combines physics and problem solving into one very challenging and unique game.  You are a mini sub and your goal is to destroy the canisters in the water around you.  This is done by bumping into the canisters to propel them into one another.  A canister is destroyed when you make it bump into another canister of the same color.  If you make two canisters of different colors bump into each other, instead of being destroyed, they will cause a third container of a different color to be formed.  The hardest part of the game is that you only have 30 seconds to destroy all of the canisters on the screen in each level.

There are two types of controls available to use.  I recommend trying both to see which one is more intuitive and easy for you.  The first is tilt controls that take advantage of the accelerometer.  Using these controls, you tilt your device to tell the sub which direction to move in.  The farther you tilt it, the faster the sub will move.  Controlling the sub by tilting alone is extremely difficult.  However, by touching the screen you can apply the brakes.   Thankfully, these brakes work very well and can be very helpful in controlling the sub.  You can calibrate the tilt controls as well as adjust the sensitivity of the controls in the options menu.  The second type of controls are touch controls.  Using these controls you tap and drag on the screen to direct your sub.  An arrow will appear on the screen in front of the sub indicating the direction that you have told it to go.  The length of the arrow indicates the speed that the sub will move at.

BioSub is a clever game.  As you move through the levels, the challenge gets harder and harder as obstacles are placed in your way or canisters are tethered together with different types of materials.  It takes some thinking to figure out some of the levels.  My only complaint with the game would be that I found the controls hard to master.  At first, I had a hard time controlling the sub.  With the two types of controls and the ability to calibrate them, you can find the controls that work best for you.

Tips and Tricks:

• Remember that if your sub or the canisters go off the screen on one side, they will appear again on the other side of the screen.  Everything wraps around.
• Moving your sub too quickly and hitting canisters too hard can often slow you down instead of making things faster.  Use your brakes if you have to.
• You may have to create another canister of another color in order to get rid of all the canisters on the screen.

Developer’s Website: http://www.origin8.com/

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